


A Country Story

by PrinceOfOneSingleDomain



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Country & Western, F/F, Gen, Joel is a famous musician and Abby is a critic, Let's get some light into this darkness, Music, Musicians, Revenge, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain/pseuds/PrinceOfOneSingleDomain
Summary: Abby beats the everloving hell out of Joel. Except he's a country singer and she's a critic out to get him.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us), Joel & Tommy (The Last of Us)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this popped into my head, and here we are.

It was the morning he would be eviscerated, torn limb from limb, beaten dead and bloody, but Joel didn’t know it yet. He rose, as he did every morning, with a demo of a song he recorded the day before as his alarm clock. It sucked. It always did. He kept listening to it as he made himself a cup of coffee using an expensive french press made in Germany, one of the few luxuries he afforded himself in this late stage of his career. He ate a sandwich. Checked to see if there were any texts from Ellie. Just a picture of her at a party with Dina, looking happy. Back when he found her, sick and alone, he never thought he’d see this moment, but there he was. It felt like something about the lovely atmosphere of the picture was calling out to him. He looked at his old picture with his daughter Sarah, taken too soon. Cancer. It filled him with longing, but then again, he hoped she would be happy to see him where he was – a long career behind him doing what he loved, having raised Ellie up to be a formidable young woman. Just when he was about to take his guitar and iron out the kinks on his new song’s bridge, Tommy called him.

“Tommy, what’s up? You still on for bowling tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but, uh, you might not wanna read the news.”

“Why?”

“Uh. Don’t.”

“You gotta give me more info than that, Tommy.”

“Well – lemme just say you have Ellie headin’ your way and she ain’t happy.”

“What did I do? Did I – I didn’t sing ‘Dyketown’, did I? Now, that song was a bona fide classic 40 years ago, and I never should’ve sang it, even 15 years ago, but, I mean, I apologised and donated and Ellie will never let me hear the end of it.”

“No, it’s not about Dyketown. We weathered that. Had to pull those strings to get you on Kimmel, but whatever, you’re my brother. And I fuckin’ hate that song.”

“So do I. They _asked_ me to play it.”

“Just – okay. Open the news. Open Rolling Stone.”

“Got it. Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“How mad is she?”

“She’s exploding as we speak.”

“Good God.”

They hung up. Joel didn’t even put his guitar away as he grabbed his phone to open Rolling Stone magazine’s online website. He missed the days when you could still have an actual reason to buy printed media, but then again, as Ellie put it, he was old as balls.

He was on the front page. It had been a while since he was on the front page of a major online outlet, but then again, Midland had asked him to duet, and if there wasn’t a hotter act in country music right now, he didn’t know what. They seemed a bit pretentious, those guys, but they made good tunes, and that’s all he could ask for.

As he clicked on his picture, showing him in his trademark flannel with his red guitar, he read the title of the article. “Pitchfork critic #murders Joel Miller.”

It felt like reading about the aftermath of a terrible accident or manslaughter. “Never in the history of tweets has a person been this close to cancellation by sheer force of will of those willing to make it happen. Joel Miller isn’t even connected to any sexual abuse allegations – people are just now, thanks to Abby Anderson, waking up to the fact his music sucks.” She hadn’t left a good hair on him, apparently, and quotes from her article were trending all over Twitter and Instagram and whatever else there was these days, Joel was too tired (tired being a way of life) to keep up these days.

The very moment he thought it would probably be a good idea to read the actual Pitchfork article he heard the sound of pummelling fists bursting against his door.

“Joel! Joel, let me in!”

“Ellie, imma need you to calm down, ya hear?”

“Joel! Let me – I have keys! This is courtesy! I’m going in!”

He heard her fumbling with the keys, drop them, curse, hit her head on the door while picking them up, curse, get them into the keyhole and open the door. Ellie was wearing black pants, a white T-Shirt with Neil Young’s “Harvest” emblazoned on it, and she entered the house like a hurricane hitting the west coast.

“That bitch!”, she said, “I’ll get her!”

“Nice to see you too. How’s Dina?”

“I’ll kill he- Abby. Not Dina. Fuck, Dad, aren’t you even – aren’t you even mad? Get that guitar outa here, we need to talk strategy, get Tommy in here!”

She still didn’t call him dad that often, even if they’d been family for a good decade now. He’d found during one of the routine charity stunts he’d been performing after the Dyketown disaster, and her mother and father had both abandoned her for a rare genetic disease that made small tumours grow on different parts of her skin. They’d gotten to talking, at he’d travelled most of the U.S. with her looking for a cure, looking for a particular doctor. Ultimately, they found him – and the treatment seemed to work. But as soon as he’d wanted to perform experiments on her, keep her there, for months, Joel had declined. He’d adopted her with his then wife Tess, but after she’d left, he’d gotten full custody. Ellie and his ex-wife called each other, they seemed to get on alright. Tess did Ellie’s make-up for prom. It was alright, if only she didn’t keep pestering him to finally come visit her with her new husband in New York. As if.

He hated New York.

“Joel? Joel, are you there? Are you in there?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just like it when you call me Dad.”

“I did?”

Ellie thought it over. “Huh, yeah. Guess because I’m scared for your life, Joel! We need to do something.”

“Hello?”, came a voice from the door. “Here’s Dina, can I come in Mr. Miller?”

“Sure thing, and call me Joel!”

“Dina!”, Ellie yelled. “Come look at the murder victim. Dad, don’t you realise – you’re dead? And that bitch killed you. I fucking – did you even see her? She looks like a behemoth. Like she crushes children for breakfast.

“Which is hot”, Dina said. She went to the sink and filled a couple of glasses with water.

“It’s not hot!”, Ellie said. Then, quieter, “it’s not hot. It’s scary.”

“Now”, Joel said, “think it’s about time I said something.”

He got up and stood taller than Ellie. Damn. It’s unfair how he could do that.

“This ain’t nothing I won’t shake off.”

“You didn’t read it, did you? Wait, I got it here.”

She got her phone out and opened the article, which was obviously the last page she’d had open before she went to her lock screen. With a voice trembling with righteous fury, she started reading out loud.

“ _Middling Midland and Joel ‘Ol’ Mighty’ Miller have apparently set their sights on reviving the worst things about the country genre. With a performance that can be called lobotomised at best, the inclusion of Joel Miller in their act reads as an attempt to make themselves seem more authentic. More and more is currently being revealed about their past as what can, understatedly, be described as part of a circle of Californian models and ‘fuckboys’, a term their lead singer is purportedly said to have preferred to ‘male escorts’. Joel Miller, for his part, is one of the last hallowed bastions of country music that’s passable in liberal circles because his songs don’t include as much pure misogyny, sexism, objectification of women as others do. Instead, it's thinly veiled misogyny at every turn, not helped by his publicity stunt of an adoption -_ this takes the fucking cake, Joel, come on! We can't let this stand. And wait, there's more. _And there is_ _of course, the famous Dyketown debacle that put a blemish on an otherwise suspiciously spotless career_.”

“I apologised”, Joel said.

“I know you did!”, Ellie said. “I still hate that song, though.”

“Goddam- they made me play it! They asked me. Of course I could've said no, but it felt rude. And of course irony bites me in the ass on that one.”

“Ah, you love me!”

“You’re my karma.”

“I am. But did you - she called me a publicity stunt. I can't let that slide."

"So it's about you?"

"It's about - Joel, hey, it's about both of us. Listen, so here's the deal -"

Dina looked on, smiling. Ellie had told her about the tension their house had experienced ever since she found out Joel made the doctors find somebody else with her rare disease to perform the needed experimental treatments on in a more conclusive manner, even though she would’ve wanted to be the one. But now, pure hatred seemed to have united them again, and it was a wonderful sight.

“But Joel”, Ellie continued, “that’s not even the worst of it! She says your music was never good. That you suck."

“That true?”

“Yeah, it’s here.”

“Now who the heck does she even think she is? I don’t – that’s my fuckin’ lifes’ work. Well, you and that. She got both.”

“I don’t know! I’ve never heard of her.”

“She wrote the last review on the new Harry Styles record”, Dina said. They both stared at her. “What?” she said. “He’s good.”

Joel sighed so loudly it was almost a supressed yell. A yellp.

“Hold your horses. Now what exactly do you think I should do about this? And do y’all want something to eat? I could make an omelette.”

Ellie thought it over for a second.

“Yeah, I could go for an omelette. Dina?”

“Yeah, I’m down.”

She texted Tommy while Joel was making the omelette, and was surprised to find Tommy had already found out everything he possibly could about that Abby Anderson. Where she was, who she was, who her father was.

Good God.

“Joel”, she said. “This is a hitpiece.”

“I know”, he said. “I mean, what can I do about it? I can’t write articles like that for shit, and – I should write a song.”

“No, Joel, she’ll – Joel! She’ll kill you if you mention her in a song! And you know her.”

“What?”

“You know her dad.”

Dina perked up. “Anderson.”

“Yes!”, Ellie said.

“Isn’t that the name of the doctor who performed that surgery on you? Who wanted to do some more trials with you but then couldn't, and some other guy found a patented cure and won the Nobel for it? Don't answer, I know. I did my research.”

"So what's this, then?", Ellie asked. "Some attempt at revenge her daddy didn't get to do what he wanted to do? If he was so good, why couldn't he get someone else?"

"Now you're just angry", Dina said, "ain't that right, Mr. Miller? Don't you get why she's doing this, bad as it is?"

Joel coughed loudly, then put two plates before them, cut the omelette in two on the frying pan and put it down. It was full of cheese, and sprinkled with Oregano and Basil. Heaven.

With one look, Joel made it clear he would not be diving deeper into the subject in front of Ellie, that he appreciated Dina being there for her and that he would be getting out of this room as quickly as possible.

“Joel”, Dina said, the name feeling a bit weird on her tongue, “thank you. And I don’t think your music is full of thinly veiled misogyny.”

“Thank you, that’s good to hear. I’m gonna write a song about her and her daddy. I'm not letting that publicity stunt comment slide, she can have the rest for all I care."

“Please don’t”, Ellie said. “Let _me_ take her down.”

“Ellie”, Dina said, “watch your blood pressure.”

“Haha, Dina. Joel, look.”

She opened up Abby’s twitter.

“That her?”, Joel said.

“Yup.”

“Good Lord. That’s some biceps.”

“Uh-huh. Now look at _this._ ”

“She’s in a band?”

Dina leaned over. “The Molotovs.”

“That’s a good name”, Joel said.

“Like hell it is. I can make a band and name it the Magnums and it’s gonna be the same.”

“You mean the weapon or the condoms?”, Dina asked.

Her and both Joel both laughed, but Ellie reprimanded them to say focused.

“I want to that concert. And I’ll record it. And then – I’ll post a bad edit of it on YouTube. Like, really bad, exceptionally bad. And everyone will laugh which will totally discredit her opinion.”

Dina took a long, hard look at Ellie.

“That’s your plan?”

“Dina, she _killed_ Joel.”

“I’m still right here, actually”, Joel said.

“She ended his _career_.”

“I’m gonna go record a song.”

“She fucked with my family.”

“See you girls when Ellie’s calmed down.”

And while Ellie talked the plan over with Tommy, Dina watching in an exasperated mood that was nevertheless in awe of Ellie’s pure grit, the familiar twang of Joel’s guitar came from the bedroom. It filled the air, and it seemed to almost dispel some of the deep-seated anger Ellie felt.

But who was this Abby? How could she dare? Getting an artist to trend in a negative way got more people to check out their music, sure, but it cancelled concerts, tarnished a legacy, ended their image.

“Ugh”, Ellie said.

“Ellie”, Dina said.

“What?”

“Is this, I mean, how hard this got you, because of that question I asked you?”

“What?”

“About – about us settling down somewhere? Moving in together?”

“What? No. No way. No.”

Maybe a little. A moment passed with nothing but the sound of forks.

“Where’s that concert?”, Dina asked later.

“Next one’s in Seattle, three days.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“What?”

“If you go, I’m going.”

“But don’t you have exams coming up?”

“I do.”

“Fuck. Goddammit, Dina. I love you.”

“I love you too. Let’s eat.”

They ate while the faint outlines of a song formed around Joel’s fingers. No matter how often she heard it, Ellie would always be mesmerised.

That Abby was going down, even if it was the last thing she did, even if it cost her her hand or at least a couple of fingers. She already imagined the edit in her head - all the fuck-ups of an amateur band displayed before a litany of interested viewers. They would show it on any news reel discussing her article on Joel. Delicious.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold", she said.

"These are some good omelettes, though", Dina added.

They'd had to work on their rapport if they were to talk to Abby. She definitely had some verbal tricks up her sleeve judging from the article. But Ellie banished any fear of the task before her from her mind - she'd made it up the moment she'd read the article. She'd murder her, even if she'd had to dust off her old MLG editing skills.


	2. The one with Abby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't let this go, huh

It was the day before the concert, and Abby could slowly see her world falling apart. What had started as an elaborate plan foolproof in the making had devolved into her lying in bed, waiting for Twitter to pick up. And it did. Joel was being cancelled at every corner, but there were just as many people coming to his defense, mostly Boomers she could just send that “Okay, Boomer” video to anonymously (what was up with that girl’s fanbase and boyfriend, she couldn’t tell), but also many her own age who had fond memories of Ol’ Mighty’s voice growing up. 

That bastard had taken her father's chance at doing something great, she kept telling herself, so he could spend two more weeks with his charge. With his charity case of a girl. 

But then she saw the pictures people were sending in. Home video he used in one of his music videos of her - Ellie - starting to learn how to play the drums at 14. And she wondered. And hurt. And wondered again. But admitting that her father had just given up when the one chance he saw had gone was - well, let's just say you can't bench press your feelings.

If you could, Abby would be the emotionally healthiest woman in America. She'd squat pain into oblivion and then do that "hnggg" thing into the mirror which she only did when she was alone. 

In the morning, her father had called – asking her what it was she thought she was doing with that article. He hadn’t sounded drunk in a while, a good year or two, something that had become ever-so-rare after the other guy won the Nobel. The disease was named after that guy. Cure, too. That’s what her father had kept repeating all throughout her High School years – that Joel had stripped him of his chance. Now she had taken his spotless white vest away from him, but instead of vindicated she just felt like her insides were filled with heavy marbles.

The moment the phone rang, she could already feel a headache coming on.

“Abs”, her father said, “do you think you’re doing this for me?”

“Dad”, she said, “he took away your chance at really being someone.”

“If that’s really what you think, you haven’t learned anything.”

He’d been going to the 12 Steps meetings quite regularly, whenever he wasn’t too drunk to attend.

“Dad”, Abby said, clutching at her head, “are you gonna be there for the concert today, at least?”

“I can’t even make one step out of the door”, he said, “it’s embarrassing. Everyone who knows me knows you did it.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“I still love you. You just have to let things go sometimes. I’m trying to let it go. Don’t need you wrestling with that, you have your own life.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

She hung up. His voice had only made her headache worse.

Owen was blowing up her phone with texts. The traced the outlines of his kisses on her lips, the faint aftertaste of him still on her tongue. She swallowed. The texts were still coming in. It seemed like almost half of them started with or contained a phrase alluding to “last week”, and she still couldn’t believe it actually happened. The sweat. The panting, the alcohol, the regret.

The sun burst through her window, a rare sight in rainy Seattle, and she settled down on her bed, her muscular body spread out and powerless to stop anything that was happening to her at the moment. She texted Owen _Let’s get through the concert, at least_ , read an angry E-mail from her manager Isaac about the low streaming numbers not improving because she decided to lose her last feature at Pitchfork to take down Joel Ol’ Mighty Miller, and her head was positively throbbing. There was no way this would get any worse. The image of her father drinking himself into a stupor, killing his career and most of his life at the time, along with the work of his colleagues because Joel thought the girl couldn’t bear to kept a little longer – it had kept haunting her for the longest time. But then she looked at the article still up on her open laptop and felt very little. The haunting was gone, but nothing had replaced it, either. Was this what it felt like? She had spent years preparing, sharpening her writing skills to pen the killing lines. Studies other takedowns. Waited carefully for her moment to strike, just when Joel was in between still trending and slowly fading out. Researching all the rumours about the members of Midland until she could count their chest hairs in her sleep (they weren’t as many as they tried to make you believe).

Now all she could do was nurse a headache while lying on her bed, then on the floor when the bed became too soft. It hadn’t brought back the father she knew, hadn’t returned him to his previous fire.

The concert was in eight hours. She packed her bass into a case and started with the exercises to warm up her voice.

***

Ellie had a dream sometimes, and unlike most of her dreams, which returned her to the time when she was abandoned and alone and sick, it was a calm one. She told Dina about it: _We’re driving into some small town. I used to dream we'd get attacked when I was younger, like there zombies or some shit around every corner, but now I don't. Now I just think of you, and me. And we're together. Both of us. You get it. So, we drive into that small town - it’s, like, it’s not evening yet, but it’s not noon anymore, either. We find the gas station. Fill up the tank all the way. Way up. And then we just drive out again, way into and across the desert. We know the direction, and it’s hot as fuck in the car, and then we just go, and it keeps going forever, forever and ever and ever it’s just you and me vibing to the music. And Joel calls sometimes, and your parents do, and sometimes we really want to get somewhere, barely make it in time. To a party. A concert. A meeting. Sometimes we just drive because we want to._

“Now, let me guess here, did you like Road Movies growing up?”

“Yeah. How did you guess?”

“You oddly love the thought of travelling cross-country more than anyone I’ve ever met, ‘specially nowadays.”

Ellie shrugged.

“Guess so.”

The place where the concert was supposed to be – the Substage was what they called it, apparently some new place that was desperate for new acts to baptise it into relevancy – was still a couple of blocks away. Ellie liked the way she could dress in the cooler Seattle – she was wearing a denim jacket over her shirt, and her boots fit the streets here even better than the Texan heat. Doc Martens would’ve been good, too, she thought. But she’d left them at home, packing wasn’t something she’d made time for.

“You’re wearing this ironically, right?”, Dina said, pointing at Ellie’s denim jacket.

“Why?”

“Because of the flaming winged guitar on the back?”

“What?” Ellie stared at Dina, open-mouthed. “That’s on there? What? That’s so cool! Can I see it?”

She danced around herself, almost knocking somebody’s coffee out of their hands.

“Sorry!”, she said, adding that southern drawl she’d copied off Joel into her speech.

“Did you actually apologise just now?”

“Must be the climate. Can you check Twitter for a second?”

“Do it yourself, dummy.”

“Nah, come on. You know, if you do favours for people, you like them better. Don’t you wanna like me better? C’mon, Dina.”

“Alright, alright.”

She whistled as soon as she checked the hashtag.

“So, two people have been fired.”

“Yes!”

Ellie had spent the entirety of the flight – and the in-flight wifi – researching every writer Pitchfork had, going into their archives, their Tumblrs, their Myspace pages, their VKontakte (which was in Russian, and it was handy that Sergej Ivanovich Rasdolbayev was sitting right next to her and happy to help a country star’s daughter in grief for her father’s career). And she found _dirt._ One writer had said, in 2005, that Rap wasn’t homophobic at all and that Kanye was a phony for saying so. Another was still subscribed to a number of accounts on Twitter that had turned far-right quicker than a person losing their left half in an accident. And how does one topple these people, take them down in a blaze of glory?

“I’m glad you ask, Dina!”, she’d said. And then she tipped off Buzzfeed and the article was out in less than an hour, before they’d even received their luggage back, which Ellie had to wrestle from a little girl with a strong conviction the suitcase was actually hers.

“Jesus”, Dina said, looking at the Twitter feed again, “it’s apocalypse.”

“Just an anonymous girl looking out for the health of the American music publishing sphere!”, Ellie said. She did finger-guns at a child. The child started crying. The mother yelled something in Ukrainian.

“Sorry!”, Ellie said, “oh God, sorry, I…”

“Keep walking”, Dina said, grabbing Ellie by the collar, “keep walking, don’t make it worse.”

Without realising it, they had arrived before the Substage. A small sign announced its existence, and stairs led down to a dark door. It was empty. Unmanned. Because it was 4 p.m., and the concert wasn’t before 8.

“Why are we here so early?”, Dina asked.

“So we can scout out the area, scavenge for supplies.”

“What?”

“So we can eat, check out where we might go after and, you know. Watch ‘em come in.”

“Dude. You’re obsessed. Should I be worried?”

“Nah. You know I love you.”

“Yeah, but would you fly for an uncomfortably long time to make a video of my concert fuck-ups?”

“You betcha. Now – falafel. How does falafel sound? I’m down. Let’s go.”

Dina watched Ellie walk away, towards a small falafel restaurant that was also, weirdly, serving something called a “falafel-killer”, which could only be understood as a business model that ultimately destroyed itself, thereby defeating capitalism forever. They sat down and ordered. For a long time, very little happened – they ate, it was good but not the end of the free market as we know it quite yet (needed something a bit spicier to achieve the perfect mix). However, just when Ellie was starting to whistle out of boredom, Tommy called.

“Hey Toms, whatup?”

“Don’t – don’t call me that.”

“Toms, can’t hear you, static.”

“Ellie – Ellie, I know there’s no static. Come on.”

“So what’s up, then?”

“You in Seattle right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You get ‘her. Joel doesn’t understand that the only reason his career is still salvageable is because he turned squeaky clean after you came into his life.”

“So I saved Joel’s career?”

“Nah, I mean, you couldn’t stop her when you didn’t even know who she was, right? Anyway. Are you subscribed to Joel’s Spotify?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Open it. Have a listen.”

Dina had already opened Spotify on her phone. There it was – a brand new Joel Miller song. And it even had her drawing of him as a cover. Damn, it was a good drawing, wasn’t it?

“Yeah, I think I will”, Ellie said. “Does he give ‘em what for?”

Tommy scoffed. “As if. You made him soft.”

“Yeah, I’ll see about that.”

She plugged her earphones in at the same time as Dina and pressed play.

It was just Joel, in his guitar, sitting in the next room. She could hear herself and Dina talking in the living room. The song sounded a bit like something out of his earlier demo tapes, the ones he made in the 90s, and she had to admit some of the melodic working was beautiful. If he didn’t sound like a Texan, he would’ve passed for a folk singer. It took her a second to let the lyrics pass through her -and then they did, all at once.

_I won’t care if my palace falls_

_As long as you’re with me at all –_

_I’ll keep singing you to sleep_

_When your nightmares ride too deep_

_So keep on keepin’, baby girl_

_And it’s all gonna be fine_

_You’re the mountains of my mind_

_And the rock that holds my world._

_Oh, I took your chance away_

_For a couple weeks or days._

_Don’t forgive me, I don’t care –_

_By the end, we’ll be nowhere_

_Both of us, wise for the wear._

It was cheesy, sure, and it was unflinchingly sentimental, but he made it work. That’s what good performer did – he imbued these words, as he did many others, with more meaning than they seemed to have on the page. Ellie wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye when the song finished. There was no mention of Abby in there anywhere, nor of her father, unless the line about the chance was about him. Ellie had hurled some insults at Joel during her brief bout with harder drugs than she’d liked to admit – that her life was meaningless, that that would’ve been her chance at greatness. But Joel and some hard work got her off them quick, and he got her Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and the K.D. Lang record, and it was fine.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?”, Ellie asked.

“Sure”, Dina said, herself a bit taken by the moment, “you, uh, go talk to Joel. And stuff.”

“Yeah.”

Standing outside the diner, restaurant, the food place, essentially, Ellie kept her eye on the venue while dialling Joel’s number. He picked up the second time she called.

“Ya good, Ellie?”

“I could be bleeding out here. You didn’t pick up.”

“Yeah, that’s because you should’ve called an ambulance before calling me, dummy.”

“Hey, don’t call me that. I’m not fifteen anymore.” After a moment, she added “at least don’t call me that while I’m plotting dastardly revenge. What’s up with your song, Joel? You’ve gone soft.”

“Well, you might have a little something to do with that.”

“Don’t blame this on me. You would have ripped them a new one back in the day.”

“I wouldn’t have given a shit back in the day, like, way back in the day. I would’ve been stoned.”

“Joel. I meant, ten years ago.”

“Dyketown?”

“Joel.”

“Alright, alright. It’s just, you know, I don’t really see the point. What would I make? And – wait, Tommy’s saying something.”

He disappeared for a second, as people do on phones. Sometimes, Ellie felt like if she were to turn around, the world would disappear behind her, and that the person she was speaking to would never return. She kept those thoughts to herself after only sharing them once, with Sam, and she’d never seen him again after that, two sad sick kids in a ward.

“Yeah, I’m gonna be interviewed in about fifteen minutes. They’re using Zoom. I’ve never even heard of Zoom unless it’s on a camera.”

“Fuckin’ wild.”

“Don’t you make fun of me.”

“What else should I stop doing, breathing?”

Joel laughed. “You got me there, kiddo.”

“But I’m still gonna go through with this, you know.”

“You do what you gotta do. You’re your own man. Woman.”

“Person!”, Ellie heard Tommy yell through the phone. “It’s fuckin’ person, Joel, how hard can it be?”

“I’m learnin’!”

“Woman would’ve been fine for me, but glad you guys are – wait… Is that?”

An enormously muscular girl in a t-shirt and a leather jacket walked into the venue, something vaguely guitar-shaped on her back.

“Damn, Joel, I think I saw her.”

“Then I better let you get to it. Just don’t do anything you’d regret, Ellie.”

“Alright. And – that line about you, well, not caring. _Don’t forgive me, I don’t care._ What’s that about?”

“You know I won’t say that.”

“You know I – you know I forgive you, right? For back then?”

He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed.

“I do, baby girl. Thank you.”

“It’s fine. It’s good.”

“You take care, alright?”

“I will.”

Ellie hung up the phone. It was later now, but they still had an hour to go until the concert. She looked at how much memory she had left – a couple of Gigs, enough to destroy a person certainly. The soft tone in Joel’s voice only ended up making her feel angrier. Who was that Abby, why did she think she had a right to do what she did? Hit him from behind, aim at his name, use Ellie to take him down.

As she walked back to Dina, her blood was boiling.

“Guess the soft sounds of Joel’s guitar didn’t soothe your achy heart”, Dina said.

“Oh, oh no”, Ellie said. “We’re doing this.”


	3. The one with the concert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this got longer than expected.

The room was burning, and Abby felt as if she were in a sauna, in full clothing, with the midday sun shining through a bunch of windows while naked people all around her reprimanded her for her choice of attire. The Substage was filling up with people who’d come to see something, anything, on a long Saturday evening in Seattle, but some of them seemed as if they’d come for the Molotovs. They weren’t the face of anything yet, but those 10000 monthly listeners on Spotify had to count for something, right? Especially since they’d been included in one of those fancy playlists. How did that happen? Abby didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She wanted to vomit. Twice. Once to vomit, once to get the aftertaste of vomit out by – it didn’t work that way.

She was watching the crowd collect through the band’s door, just behind the stage, and took her bass out of its case. It was a beautiful black work of art that she’d bought with the first money she’d ever earned, even if she had to buy her at-home amplifier with the second money she’d ever earned, stage equipment with the third one – she needed this to work out at least somewhat. It was time. She couldn’t keep coasting from place to place, workplace to workplace, always having to explain that she didn’t take steroids, no, she just wanted to feel strong. Then why, if she could bench press more than most her fellow men, did her knees feel as if they were brittle pieces of old, rotten wood?

“So, Abs”, Mel said, already warming up her arms for the drumming she was about to do, “you good?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You and Owen seem kinda tense, did something happen?”

“Uh, no. Nah.”

Mel looked at Abby. “Abby, come on, you know you can tell me anything.”

“Nope.”

“What, you can’t?”

“No, I mean, I can.”

“So why aren’t you?”

“Because there’s something.”

“Then tell me.”

“Oh, I meant, because there’s, uh, nothing.”

“Huh. I see.”

“You do?”

Mel nodded.

“You’re planning a surprise for me.”

Abby felt her heart try to commit ritualistic suicide. It was jumping up and down in a manner she could only describe as the worst kind of hurt. When she was going through her brief emo phase in middle school, she had been astounded at the human body’s capacity to make her feel anxious whenever she wanted to enter a toilet. Now, it was the very same feeling, except it wasn’t her body turning against her, it was herself turning against her best friend and, therefore, herself, in a moment she only hoped she would one day describe as that stupid thing she once did when she was young. It’s what she hoped most periods of her life so far would turn into.

“Y-yeah”, she said then, setting up a fake smile that made her look like a beefy doofus, “we totally are. I mean, it’s your birthday soon, isn’t it?”

“It is! But first, we need to get through this. Where’s Owen, anyway?”

“Bathroom. Freshening up.”

“I gave him some moisturiser”, Mel said, “so he can take care of his skin. It’s still more me taking care of him, anyway, since I’m telling him to do it, but, you know, baby steps.”

“Haha, that’s funny.”

Owen walked into the room. The tension was palpable. It was something between three dozen “Eh, uh, hi” stuck in the back of Abby’s throat and him rubbing the back of his head in a cutesy way that screamed of “I am innocent beyond reproach, back off with those wanton accusations”. Problem was, there were no accusations in the room.

“You guys are weird”, Mel said.

“Well”, Abby said, “it’s just stage jitters. And, I mean –“

“Yeah”, Owen said. “it’s, I mean, we’ll get over it.”

“What’s going on?”, Mel asked.

“What?”, Owen said. “What – come on. We’re good, we’re nervous, it’s our first big gig, we should be excited! Right, Abby?”

Abby’s face had grown hard. The gears in her head were turning. And for the first time in a long time, she felt as if they were turning in the right direction.

“I had sex with Owen”, she said then.

Mel looked like a lost deer for a second, like Michael Corleone when his badly acted daughter was shot before his very eyes in the third Godfather. She dropped one drumstick to the ground. The other one she threw across the room. She didn’t look either of them in the eye.

“Mel”, Abby said, “I’m so sorry – I take full responsibility, we were drunk and I just…”

“Shut your mouth”, Mel said then. “You’re a piece of shit, Abby, but that takes two.”

Abby shut her mouth quicker than she ever had.

Owen’s face was circling through different normal-seeming but slightly off expressions quicker than someone learning English as their third language.

“So, what about the…”

“I’m pregnant”, Mel said then. And she ran out. Owen took one quick glance at Abby, mouthed “sorry” and ran after her.

So there she was.

Alone.

The room was spinning. Nothing made sense anymore, but then again, everything made perfect sense. She started pacing back and forth, trying to think of a way out of this. Maybe she’d bail, leave the room hanging – but who would ever hear their songs then? Her songs? She’d obviously have to stay away from playing Owen’s songs, yes, but she had at least enough material to fill a 20 minute guerrilla concert and she’d just alienated the only two people in her life she had had a somewhat stable relationship with in the span of an hour. Or a night. Or a day – who cares?

She felt vertigo. Genuine vertigo. And it was her fault. She knew it. The walls knew it. It must’ve been why they were closing in. There was only one thing that seemed to make sense – the long instrument resting in a small stand, black and beautiful.

“Please give at least a lukewarm response to – the Molotovs!”

Applause.

Shit. She grabbed her bass. She would be the only person on stage. Her anxiety, somewhat tempered by two other people making noise with her together, came back in full force. She walked out.

“So”, Ellie said, slurping her gin & tonic, positioned perfectly to film the stage over the heads of semi-excited onlookers, “I was under the assumption we’d be seeing a band today.”

“Yes”, Dina answered, as she felt that was needed at the moment.

“Then where are the others?”

“Beats me.”

Abby took to the stage slowly, as if every step were somehow more difficult than the last. Her eyes were wide, which immediately proved to be a bad idea when faced with spotlights.

“Hi guys”, she said.

“Woo”, that was one person, or two people at most. The rest emphatically nodded in her direction. Her muscles were huge, which gave ample opportunity for sweat to collect on them.

“Oh damn”, Ellie said, readying her camera, which she had unearthed for this here occasion to have the clearest footage possible, “this is going to be glorious. Imma – I’ll get a bit closer.”

“Then be careful with that camera, or else you’ll drop it.”

“I don’t drop things. I’m nimble. Agile and quick. And… is it really quiet in here?”

Abby was standing in front of the microphone, and the beginnings of about twenty sentences were racing through her mind at once.

Ellie started recording.

“So, uh”, Abby said, “we’re down two tonight, so it’s, uh, it’s just me now.”

Screaming from outside.

“What do you mean, you fucked her?”

“I – it happened!”

“That shit doesn’t just happen, Owen!”

Ellie turned to Dina.

“Oh Em Gee.”

“Ellie, don’t.”

“I have to. I really do.”

Ellie ran outside, leaving Dina to watch the concert unfold.

Abby took her bass into her hands.

“This is Fuck Me.”

“ _FUCK ME! What can I do to make it up to you?”,_ Owen shouted outside. Some people giggled inside.

That’s when Abby decided to loop the bass. She ducked down, moved pedals between amplifiers, combined cables in a way that was somewhere between mad and haphazard, and started playing. Her voice was the softest one Dina could’ve possibly expected from anyone her size and form.

“ _I’ve been in love with you for many days_

_And if you’d let me, I would show you how_

_I could care for you in oh-so-many ways_

_But I need your skin right now_

_So take me to your father’s car, it can’t be far_

_And open up the door for me, and I’ll make you see_

_That you deserve better than I could give_

_But…”_

She gathered air.

_“FUCK ME!”_

Ellie came back, shaking her camera in the air triumphantly.

“I got the whole deal. Apparently, she fucked a pregnant girl’s boyfriend.”

“Ouch.”

“How hard is she sucking?”

“Listen.”

Ellie listened. “She’s actually pretty good.” She thought it over for a moment, eyeing her camera. Dina was looking at Ellie just as expectantly, just before Abby moved to her second chorus.

“ _Fuck me, baby,_

_Make me feel alive_

_It's so hard to survive, sometimes,_

_throwing ropes across the mountains_

_I'll engulf you like a fountain -”_

“She’s alright. Explicit seems to be their thing”, Ellie said once the song had wound down. The crowd seemed appreciative, if still apprehensive. They didn’t know what the hell was going on.

“Flex your muscles!”, one of the guys in the crowd shouted. There were appreciative cheers from both men and women.

“Is that what you came for?”, Abby asked. She was starting to feel good about standing on stage, even by herself. “These here? These are the results of hard work, taking your vegetables, you know.”

She flexed. The cries would have catapulted her self-esteem into the stratosphere and led to a set so good it would turn heads all the way down the Mississippi river, but then Mel stormed in, jumped up on stage (slowly, she was pregnant after all) and pointed an accusatory finger at Abby. The room fell dead silent. Some people, perhaps, believed it was all part of the show, but the lack of make-up on Abby’s face pointed towards the entire ordeal being lacking in theatrics.

“How dare you.”

“Mel, I…”

“No. No, you don’t. You fucked my boyfriend. I’m pregnant. Don’t tell me he got you into it, it takes two, and Owen’s weak. You know it. I know it. But he’s the best thing I’ve ever had, so you better believe we’ll make it work, and that we’ll never see you again. If you have any of my or God. Fucking. Forbid. _his_ stuff in your ratshit piece of shit room you call your _cave_ , put it out in a box tomorrow at 10 a.m. If you don’t, I’ll call the cops on you for theft. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, m-ma’am. Mel, I'm so - I'm so sorry, I..."

Abby looked smaller than should be physically possible. Mel cut her off immediately.

“Oh, and, just in case I haven’t said it yet – fuck you.”

“Yeah, I got that too."

Chuckles in the crowd. Mel turned towards them.

“Enjoy the concert!”, she said, her voice pure exasperation. She stormed out just as quickly as she’d stormed in, Owen waiting by the door. They left, and the door closing was the only sound before the murmurs started. Abby tried to turn invisible, which was hard given that a number of spotlights were shining her straight in the face.

“That woman is done with shit”, Ellie said. “Like, in general.” Dina nodded.

“Yeah, this is horrible. Like, I see how this Abby has made mistakes, but she’s like – look at her. She’s dying up there.”

“And I got it on camera.”

“And you got it on – wait. _What?_ ”

Ellie showed the video to Dina on the camera’s built-in display. It showed the young woman, in all her sweaty, appropriately-lit short-haired glory, chewing Abby’s soul and spitting it back in her face. Then, another short clip - the same woman arguing with a man in front of the concert venue, both of them spewing profanities like profanity-spewing dragons.

“Damn”, Dina said. “You know no bounds today, huh?”

Ellie nodded eagerly, pushing a cute strand of hair out of her diabolical features. Dina didn’t know whether to chastise her or feel mildly turned on – she opted for a bit of both.

“That’s cruel.”

“So- so what? You know what she did. For some self-delusional reason. And what she said about me.”

“Yeah, but this is some _real shit_. Joel’ll be fine.”

“But –“

“You’re a piece of _shit!_ ”

It had taken one yell from the crowd, that’s what always did it, and the rest joined in. The booing came quick and hard.

At first, it looked like Abby would let it pass over, wait for a moment of silence and then begin playing a song that would knock people’s socks off, even if they weren’t wearing any for personal reasons. But the hate was relentless. Everyone who had ever had someone break their hart by use of another channelled their emotions through yells and hollers in Abby’s direction, and Ellie watched her large stature falter, collapse in on itself. Her exposed arms were no longer beautiful markers of her work and discipline – they were naked skin, vulnerable and easily punctured. The Substage’s owner – or at least their announcer, though they didn’t look like they could afford to keep the two separate – jumped up on stage.

“Guys, c’mon. It’s about the music.”

“Booo!”, came a particularly feverish yell from a young woman. “Get her off the stage!”

“Off the stage! Off the stage! Off the stage!”, they chanted.

Ellie felt a cold sweat jump up and down her spine. The camera weighed heavy in her hand. She had enough material to sink Abby twice over, but more could never hurt, right? Then why wasn’t she recording? Was it because she could see, even from a distance, without the camera’s zoom, just using her bare eyes, that Abby’s eyes had grown misty, tears barely held back?

“God fucking dammit”, Ellie said. “Now she’s too sad to hate.”

“Knew you’d come around”, Dina said.

“I’m not coming around, just – look at that! We’ve all made mistakes. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“Some people seem to think she does.”

“I – a fuck it! I hate this! I hate moral dilemma. I hate it when stuff isn’t clear-cut. I really do, why can’t life make this easier? Ugh.”

Abby, after taking one last furtive glance around the room while clutching her bass for dear life, went down to the sound of cheers. Then, just as quickly as the crowd had become enraged and hostile, it lost form and cohesiveness. Such was a mob – as soon as their target left, they suddenly found their lives to have a bit less meaning than they had before, and that was terrifying. Ellie felt it herself, if she was honest. She put her camera into her backpack.

“Let’s wait a bit”, she said, “until everyone’s left.”

“Yeah.” Dina opened her phone. She sighed. “It’s all over Instagram anyways, though it just looks like she sucked at playing or something. Most people don’t provide context. Oh, there’s the #Substagehomewrecker. None of ‘em got her name though.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sure you don’t want to jump with joy right now?”

“Dina, do you wanna finish me off or something?”

“Back at the hotel.”

“Shut up. I’m not in the mood. I will be, I mean, I will be in the mood in, like, an hour, tops, if you do the thing with the…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. But right now, I’m – I don’t even know.”

“It’s called soul-searching.”

“But I’m a country gal, through and through, Dina.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Of course I do.”

A text. Tommy. _Did you sink her ship yet?_

Ellie had lost all interest in Battleship metaphors. In fact, it felt like she had lost interest in anything. Even thoughts of Micah in Red Dead Redemption 2 didn’t send her into a fit of internet-fueled rage like they usually did – she could count on them to make her emote. Was she turning into Max Caulfield? Did she need to sit down on a tree stump and have a heart-to-heart while a guitar played wibbly wobbly in the background? She sighed deeply while the last of the crowd left the room. The ownouncer came over to them.

“You want a drink? Last round.”

“Dina?”, Ellie asked, looking over. Dina shrugged. That meant non-alcoholic, sweet, but not pink.

“Could you mix some sparkling water and apple juice for her and get me a gin & tonic, please”, Ellie said.

“Comin’ up.”

So he was the owner, the announcer and the bartender. Ownounder. It did not make sense. Ellie didn’t care.

Abby walked out, her hair open and long, falling sweaty across her shoulders. Her eyes were red. She sat down at the bar.

“Go get ‘er, Tiger”, Dina said.

“So you want me to walk over to her?”

“Yes.”

“And talk?”

“Yeah.”

“About feelings?”

“You got it, chief.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“And I didn’t even to the thing with the…”

“If you start talking about _that_ , I won’t move away from you, like, ever. So… here goes nothing.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too, you evil wench.”

With that, Ellie stood up and headed towards Abby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter coming right up! When it's done. That might not be, like, right around the corner. But two at most. I think.


	4. The one with the Rocket Diary

Ellie approached the hulking mass of Abby’s backside. However, instead of starting to grow in stature or become bigger as things usually did when you approached them, Abby seemed to only be getting smaller. There was something deeply vulnerable about those muscles, and Ellie realised it was because Abby’s heart had been exposed up there. Ugh. Ellie hated it when people she wanted to punch in the face got all puppy-eyed in the process. It ruined her evening and made Joel proud of her, which was oddly often the same thing.

“I’m gonna assume this one isn’t taken”, Ellie said. She took the stool next to Abby. Abby turned around.

It was the first time Ellie got a good look at her face. It was broad, a bit punchable, but then again, most faces were if you tried hard enough.

“Oh.”

Abby’s face convulsed.

“You?”

Ellie did a single waving motion with her hand. “Me.”

“Here.”

“Here.”

“Why?”

“Heck, I don’t even know anymore.”

The bartender gave Abby a fancy purple craft beer bottle with a glass, put a gin & tonic in front of Ellie and carried the other one to Dina. It was quiet in the bar, and it seemed to have started raining outside.

“So”, Ellie said, nursing her gin & tonic for confidence and because she felt it tasted good, which was the prime reason she’d ordered it, “mind explaining to me what that article was about?”

Abby laughed. She threw her head back, exposing her neck for a knife slash. Ellie caught the thought as it passed through her head. It almost felt like an alternate earth was interfering, one where they would be fighting, rolling around in the dirt, crying about their father figures. She took another swig. Good tonic. Better gin.

“This is so fucking rich”, Abby said, “this is legitimately the worst day of my life.”

“I saw.”

“So you saw the show?”

“What did you think?”

“That you walked in after. That, you know, God or whatever at least gave me that today.”

“Nuh-uh. Seems like you have been forsaken.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Cheers.”

They did the clink thing.

“So”, Ellie said, “article. Shoot. You said some fucked up stuff in there.”

“Why aren’t you killing me right now?”

“Cause you’re dead. I didn’t even have to do anything.”

Abby nodded. Then she quickly turned away from Ellie, who soon heard a stifled sob.

“Hey?”

“I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“I’m not crying.”

_Aw damn. Aw shit. Aw – Dina?_

Ellie looked at Dina. Dina mouthed _this one’s all yours._

_Fuck._

_Yeah, still on you._

Ellie thought of tentatively extending an arm towards Abby, but quickly realised the possibility of a most swift “Don’t you dare touch me!” with an accidental punch to her face that would send her three blocks across Seattle was too large a possibility.

“Yo”, Ellie said, “you’re crying, though.”

That was, in Ellie’s humble opinion, among the dumbest things she’d ever said. Good thing it seemed to stop Abby’s crying for a second.

“You’re bad at this”, Abby said, wiping at her eyes, which seemed to be turning even redder and more tired.

“Well, all you do is avoid my question. So, you know. I still sorta need an answer here.”

Ellie set her glass down.

“Listen. I want to know. Because what you wrote, it fucking hurt me. I’m not some publicity stunt. I fucking love Joel. So – so what? So what did you even want to accomplish?”

Abby took a silent moment.

“I wanted to feel better about what Joel did to my dad.”

“And what, according to you, happened?”

“My dad had an opportunity to really make his life matter and Joel kept that from happening.”

“So his life never mattered?”

“Of course it did. He’s my dad.”

“So then what?”

“Huh?”

Ellie waited until Abby had turned around to face her. It gave her the first really good opportunity to study her features – her broad chin, the overall edges of her face. She looked destroyed, too, what with her eyes darting about, resting on Dina for a minute before returning to Ellie. Geeze.

“So why did you do it? No, don’t look away. Don’t look down. Look at me.”

It was the thinly veiled harshness of tone Dina recognised immediately as the line that any more bullshit would make a line crossed. Ellie had this scary intensity to her sometimes, and it made her both proud to know it was on her side, and also somewhat scared she might someday earn a stern talking-to when she didn’t believe in herself hard enough.

Abby swallowed. She started rubbing her arm, exposed and somewhat sweaty, muscles tensing and relaxing.

“I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know anymore, okay? I – it felt so good when I thought about it. I thought – this guy’s the reason why my dad’s career ended, right? He dedicated his life to that research. And as soon as he lost – well, you – and somebody else found the cure in a year, when he could’ve found it, that was it.”

“And now?”

“I’m – I’m still sorta pissed at Joel. I’ll be honest with you.”

“That’s whatever.”

“But publishing that article – my last one for them, so they let me go a bit wild with it – didn’t do anything. And I got so high on it. God.”

“I’m assuming you won’t do it again?”

“I don’t have the energy.”

The fact that people had started storing things not as physical tapes, not as books or notes but as data, made some metaphors rather redundant. However, that didn’t stop Ellie from feeling as if the recording of Abby’s so-called concert was burning a hole into something. The hell was she supposed to with it now?

The door to the bar opened. Two people walked in.

One of them was a girl, slightly older than the other, dressed poorly, looking vaguely like she belonged either in bed or in front a table studying for finals at this time of night. The other one, a boy, looked too young to be in the bar at all. They quickly scanned the environment and spotted Abby, looking as sad as a broken mountain, sitting next to Ellie, who still hadn’t turned off her intimidating demeanour. She flashed them the eyes of death. The boy stepped slightly behind the older girl to get to a safer vantage point.

The barkeeper, busy trying to look like he wasn’t listening to every word said, cleared his throat.

“Can I see some ID?”

“We’ll be quick”, the girl said. She looked at Abby, then whispered something to the boy, who nodded. Then, downhearted, he seemed to register the empty room, the empty stage, empty everything.

“We’re too late”, he said, “let’s go home.”

The girl shook her head. “But don’t you want to talk to her?”

“It’ll be weird.”

“No, Lev. Come on. You prepared for this.”

The boy looked to be the very picture of adolescent insecurity, one even deeper than average. Abby perked up. There was literally no other person in the room expected to be there, and her remaining braincells that hadn’t left her head either through the strange wetness of her eyes or surrendered to mild alcohol put two and two together. This guy was there to see her. Or the band. Please not the band. If he was there to see the band, there would be some explaining she’d have to do, and if she couldn’t explain what happened to herself, how could she to some hopeful looking up at her? Literally. She felt tall, something that always made her nervous when she was younger, because she had the idea in her head that girls shouldn’t be too tall until her father talked her out of it.

“So”, Abby said, clearing her throat, “you came to see the band? We finished playing, unfortunately. It was a really short concert.”

Ellie shot her a glance and sipped her drink, eyebrow up.

“Excruciatingly short”, Abby said then.

Lev looked up at her yet again.

“We – I – We – well…”

Was he – starstruck? Abby felt herself blush. Ellie noticed, too, judging by how she leaned back to listen even more closely even though she heard everything dear god, why was she so annoying?

“We stumbled on your music back at home”, the older girl said, “and – well – it just came at a really good time in our lives, I guess. His life, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”, Abby asked.

Lev sighed. _“The Rocket Diary”,_ he said then. “I just listened to it all summer. Like…”

“Our parents threw us out.”

“Threw me out.”

“Us”, the girl corrected him. “And that song got him through. So, I guess, even if we can’t hear it…”

“Thank you”, Lev said, “it means a lot to me.”

“Well”, Abby said, “I actually wrote that one. So I guess it’s good I’m still here.”

While Ellie ruminated on the deadly double-entendre of “still being here” as opposed to being gone, something shifted in Lev.

“Could you…?”

“That’s too much”, the older girl said, already guessing at what her brother would want.

“No, let him”, Abby said.

Ellie leaned forward. This was turning into something quite different from what she had previously imagined. While on the road, fury had filled her so thoroughly that the space carved out for “looking at cute gay TikToks with Dina while pretending to so ironically” had to fend for itself. Now, Abby was showing something like kindness to a stranger on the worst possible day of her life, and while Ellie tried her best to chalk it up to the stranger being a fan, and Abby being stuck so far up her own singer-songwriter butt she enjoyed the admiration, there was something else at play here.

Dina watched on, remembering details to bring up in conversation with Ellie later.

“Can you play it?”, Lev said. “We bought tickets and everything.”

Ellie felt the scheming part of her mind being up to something and knocked on its door. Immediately, she realised that she could tell Lev everything that had happened in the very room he was standing in, with video proof, and while it would probably not kill his love for “Rocket Diary”, it would make the entire situation so unbearably awkward Abbie could not play, his sister would want to leave, and she, Ellie of Texas, would have won.

But what would she have won, exactly?

Abbie leaned in.

“Is it okay with you”, she whispered to Ellie, “if I do this before you, like, destroy me whatever?”

Ellie took a long sip of her gin & tonic and looked Abby in the eye. It was the first time they were so close, and she could smell Abby’s sad breath. In her eyes was none of the malice she’d imagined, just someone.

She remembered Joel the day the Pitchfork article broke. How he’d calmly gotten up, written a song that was now trending (she checked before walking in) and garnering no bad press whatsoever because he had seemed so utterly above it all. Quite unlike him in his youth, or how she’d known him before.

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

Abby breathed a barely audible sigh of relief.

“Is she your manager?”

Ellie spurted out part of her drink. The thought shook her to the core, and not just because Abby wasn’t using enough twang in her music. She looked over at her and wondered what she thought of the idea while Abby just smiled it away in a rare occurrence of social grace.

“So”, Abby said, “I’ll be right back. You two come to the front, alright?”

She locked eyes with the bartender as if to check whether she was still welcome on the stage – she found that she was, although not very much so. For a moment, she wondered if Owen and Mel would storm back in during her performance and give her an earful or two, or maybe a well-deserved destruction of her bass or guitar. Her guitar, which was still in the back, hopefully safe. She checked – there it was, still in its makeshift bag (actually from an old bass, she hadn’t managed to buy a proper one for the guitar yet). As she came out, Ellie turned around to look at her, Dina now at her side. They were talking about something she couldn’t hear, but then again, they probably always would be, just like Owen and Mel would probably now be as far from her as any other two people ever would. The only thing that mattered were these two ahead of her, and the kid looking up at her.

She hung the guitar around her shoulders.

“So, uh”, she said, “this is _Rocket Diary_.”

She remembered when she’d seen Owen strumming the song, his hands large and kind. She’d felt them so briefly and paid for it dearly. Vaguely, a memory of her father playing guitar rose, and then watching Joel Miller on some country variety show while collecting material to use against him. It was during one of those endless nights led by that one single stupid needless goal she wrote the song, really. She closed her eyes.

_“You hurt me more than you could ever know it –_

_But I think that soon you’ll see_

_That time’s the only thing you should’ve borrowed_

_From the boys at ABC._

_I’m becoming myself in the evenings_

_When I read and stay up late_

_I guess you always need something to hate._

_Maybe I’ll look into it tomorrow –_

_You know, hurts don’t matter much to me._

_I’ll always look to you to drown my sorrow –_

_You’ll always be my only place to be._

_I’m losing myself come every morning_

_Shedding all parts of my skin_

_I guess when you’re with me, you never win -_

_So until I can stay right where you need me_

_And not only pass it by_

_I’ll take my Rocket Diary and write you_

_Another sunken lullaby. […]_

After Abby finished with the hush of her voice, still so unlike the power her body seemed to carry around with itself, the room was quiet. Then, she heard Lev stifling a small sob, one he quickly got under control so as not to lose his cool.

“Thank you”, he said, and the older girl next to him wiped away a tear of her own. They seemed to have gotten what they came for, which made Abby glad to have stayed and not just bailed after all – it was this sort of personal experience and connection that made music worthwhile.

However, that left two people who still needed something, and despite herself, Abby looked at Dina and Ellie, who was staring at her with her eyes wide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story has once again grown quite a bit - instead of posting a very large chapter, I decided to give the last one more room to breathe in the next one. I hope you enjoy this one as well, considering this update has been a long time coming.


	5. The last one

The barkeeper, not particularly stunned by the emotive way Abby had slightly started slurring her words towards the end, was closing up shop for the night. Abby offered to let Lev and his sister, who finally introduced herself as Yara, stay with her for a while, an offer they kindly refused so as not to intrude. Before them lay the promise of the open road, and the fear of having to go back home and face the fury of their mother, so they opted to visit as many relatives along the way as they could, hoping someone might take them in. Ellie watched Abby mod and hug the duo goodbye. Dina pinched her shoulder.

“How’s the diabolical plan going?”

“I’m a bit fucked here, to be honest.”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“I mean, c’mon, look at this.”

Nevertheless, there was still a little part left in Ellie’s mind ready to take Abby down. It didn’t feel as substantial anymore, but she knew that, until she got rid of it completely, she would not be able to leave Seattle.

It was a night lit by streetlamps and streetlamps reflected off clouds, the glass windows of shops around them doubling as twice the amount of streets and small dots of white, purple, yellow and gold. Abby looked back at Ellie and Dina.

“So”, Ellie said, “wanna take a walk?”

“I’m tired, to be honest”, Abby said.

“Not that kind of walk.”

“I mean, can’t we put this off until tomorrow or something?”

“I don’t know – can we?”

“Guess not.”

“Exactly.”

With a hint of jealousy, Dina noticed how quickly they had learned to respond to one another. Guess that’s what happens when you start a blood feud.

In a move she would never come to regret, she let the two of them walk ahead while staying back just far enough to hear their conversation.

Abby had draped her bass around her shoulder, leaving the other instruments to pick up later, if at all. She had put a light jacket on her shirt, and the sleeves barely managed to hide the fact her arms were broad as the distance between two coasts. However, Ellie still clearly felt like she had the upper hand. If they were to reach the piers, where water met earth, and decided to fight in the shallow water, things might turn out a bit differently. But she had video material. And it was time she told Abby about it.

“So, you know, that whole thing that went down with your bandmates.”

“Former bandmates. Might as well get used to the new normal.”

“Former bandmates, then. I got it on tape.”

“On tape? Do people still say that?”

It took a moment to register.

“You have it on video?”

Ellie nodded. Now would be an awesome moment for a dramatic cigarette, she thought, though she had never smoked or even intended to start. Though you never intend to really start smoking, she thought, you just smoke.

“Are you – are you going to do anything with it?”

“I don’t know.”

She felt Abby weaken next to her. It was physical in the most visceral way – she got smaller. Ellie had noticed it happening more or less any time she mentioned the article, or Joel, or anything at all that might remind Abby of the reason Ellie and Dina had come in the first place.

“Huh”, Abby said then, looking towards the empty quasi-empty streets ahead, “that’s just perfect. Go ahead, ruin my life. Not that there’s much left, anyways.”

“What happened with that Owen guy?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Do you think there’s anything more you got to lose here?”

Abby sighed. The sound of their footsteps was amplified by their boots, but as soon as a car drove by, there was nothing but its soft roar around. It was oddly quiet for such a busy night, but then again, there was a new something making the rounds, and people were starting to feel hesitant about moving around. It felt like the end of the world sometimes.

“I’m not sure”, Abby said, “I guess you never know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, you need to really fuck something up to know how much it was worth in the first place. Or at least that’s what self-destructive people tell themselves, not that I would now.”

She chuckled. Ellie did, too.

“You know”, she said, “I think you might be onto something there. Write a song about that.”

“Just might.”

“And put my name in it.”

“What?”

“Write a song with you apologising to some Ellie and I’ll be fine. And won’t release the video.”

Abby stopped walking. She quietly brushed some hair out of her face while Dina moved up to them, standing ever-so-slightly outside of the heat they generated when together.

“So I write it.”

“Ya bet, pardner.”

“And then – I send it to you?”

“Oh no.”

“So I just write it? And you check – how? You got some special powers or something?”

“You release it.”

“Huh.”

“On Spotify or something. And Twitter.”

“Oh dear.”

“And you @ me.”

“Did you just say @?”

“I did say @. You do the thing. With my handle and stuff. So I can link it. To Joel. And he can pass it around. Yo, Dina, how many followers does Joel have?”

“Couple hundred thousand.”

“Ya hear that?”, Ellie said.

Abby turned blue. “That’s a lot.”

“Uh-huh. So you better get crackin’. You got a month. Wait, here’s my – can you grab your phone or something?”

Abby, mind slightly on the verge to catatonic, pulled her phone out of her pocket and handed it to Ellie. The latter unlocked the former’s camera, and took a picture of her twitter, opened at some retweeted picture of Dina in a swimming suit she had finally had the guts to release. _Hot_. They would probably do the thing later, and Ellie felt slightly giddy at the thought already.

“Here”, she said, returning Abby’s phone back to her, “and – uh – don’t ever, like, do that shit again, yeah?”

“It’s not like I’ll get the opportunity.”

“Don’t shortchange your career opportunities”, Dina said, “you might get the chance.”

“Don’t encourage her!”, Ellie answered, laughing.

“Well, somebody has to”, Dina said. She looked at Abby. “If you’re ever in Texas, call. I love this awkward energy we got going.”

Abby, by contrast, was dying. “Uh”, she said then, her remaining social brain cells straining, “thanks.”

Ellie extended a hand. Abby looked at it as if it were the first warm thing she'd seen in a long time.

"Come on", Ellie said, "take it. Let's shake on it."

Abby smiled. It looked a bit awkward, if still somewhat endearing. "Want me to put my back into it?", she asked Ellie.

Ellie shook her head. "That might put my back out of it, whatever that it might be."

They shook hands. Locked eyes. Said goodbye, take care.

And that was that.

*** *** ***

Epilogue:

A couple of days later, in the Joel Miller household.

“See, Ellie, I told you it’d turn out fine.”

“Yeah, I could just see your smug guitar-strummin’, bucket-kickin’, Kentucky Straight Bourbon-sippin’ face all over when I was in Seattle.”

“It’s because I’m famous, you know.”

“Shut. Now, what did you think of the song, anyway?”

“She ain’t half bad, now, I gotta admit that. Might’ve even asked her to collab on something if she didn’t wanna kick my ass that bad.”

“I don’t think she would’ve wanted that.”

“Why’s that, baby girl?”

“Cuz country music ain’t that popular no more, Dad.”

“You sound all southern.”

“Do not!”

“And you called me Dad.”

“Oh yeah, I did.”

There was tea there, and the smell of cinnamon in the kitchen, and a guitar in the living room and any other room, and there was a home, and a woman’s voice in the distance, quietly asking for forgiveness that had already been granted, without her knowing it yet, a long time ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming along for this short ride, folks. Hope you have a good one, hope you all stay safe and feel well as often as you can.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, any feedback is very welcome!


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